Nevertheless, I still didn’t trust him not to jump up and kill me, so I kept the gun pointing at him all the time.
“Claudia,” I shouted as loudly as I could. “Claudia, I need your help.”
I heard the bathroom door being unlocked and then footsteps on the floorboards above my head.
“Has he gone?” Claudia asked from the top of the stairs. It was so dark that she couldn’t even see the man lying right beneath her.
“I think he might be dead,” I said. “But I’m taking no chances, and it’s getting so dark I can hardly see him.”
“I’ve got a flashlight by my bed,” my mother said in a matter-of-fact tone.
I heard her walk along the corridor to her room, then she came back, shining the flashlight brightly down the stairwell.
“Oh my God!” Claudia said, looking down.
In the light we could see that the man’s head was lying almost flat against his right shoulder in a most unnatural position. The man’s neck was clearly broken just as mine had once been.
But, on this occasion, there were no friendly paramedics to apply an immobilizing collar, no one to save his life with prompt and gentle care as there had been for me at Cheltenham racetrack all those years ago.
This man’s broken neck had bumped on down to the bottom of a wooden stairway, all the time being wrenched to one side by my arm.
And it had killed him.
15
What the hell do we do now?” Claudia said from the top of the stairs.
“Call the police,” I said from the bottom.
“How?”
“I’ll take the car and find somewhere with a signal,” I said.
But there was no way Claudia and my mother were allowing me to go off in the car, leaving them alone in the house with the gunman. Dead or not, they were still very frightened of him, and I can’t say I blamed them.
“Pack up our things,” I said to Claudia. “Mum, pack an overnight bag. No, take enough for a few days. We’re going somewhere else.”
“But why?” my mother asked.
“Because someone sent this man here to kill me and when he finds out that his gunman hasn’t succeeded, that someone might send another to try again.”
Neither of them asked the obvious question: Why was the man trying to kill me? Instead they both quickly went together to pack, taking the flashlight with them and leaving me standing in the dark.
In spite of being pretty certain the man was indeed dead, I didn’t stop listening, holding the gun ready in case he made a miraculous recovery.
I found I was shaking.
I took several deep breaths, but the shaking continued. Perhaps it was from fear, or relief, or maybe it was a reaction to the sudden realization that I had killed a man. Probably a bit of all three.
The shaking continued for several minutes, and I became totally exhausted by it. I wanted to sit down, and I felt slightly sick.
“We’re packed,” Claudia said from upstairs, the flashlight again shining down the stairway.
“Good,” I said. “Pass the things down to me.”
I stepped carefully onto the first few stairs, next to the man’s legs, and reached up as Claudia handed down our bags and my mother’s suitcase.
Next, I guided each of them down in turn, making sure they stepped only on the wood and not on the man.
“Oh my God. Oh my God,” Claudia said, repeating it over and over again, as she came nervously down the stairs, pressing herself against the side while at the same time holding her hands up to ensure she wouldn’t touch the man by mistake.
My mother was surprisingly much more stoical, waltzing down the stairs as if there was nothing there. In fact, I suspected that she would’ve liked to have given the corpse a sharp kick for ruining her roast dinner.
The three of us went out to the car, loaded the stuff and drove away down the rutted lane, leaving the dead man alone in the dark house.
I drove into Cheltenham and called the police, but I didn’t dial the emergency number. Instead, I called Chief Inspector Tomlinson on his mobile.
“The man who killed Herb Kovak,” I said, “is lying dead at the bottom of my mother’s stairs.”
There was the slightest of pauses.
“How tiresome of him,” the chief inspector said. “Did he just lie down there and die?”
“No,” I said. “He broke his neck falling down the stairs.”
“Was he pushed?” he asked, once again demonstrating his suspicious mind.
“Helped,” I said. “We fell down the stairs together. He came off worse. But he was trying to stab me with a carving knife at the time.”
“What happened to his gun?” he asked.
“He lost it under the fridge,” I said.
“Hmm,” he said. “And have you told the local constabulary?”
“No,” I said. “I thought you could do that. And you can also tell them he was a foreigner.”
“How do you know?”
“He said something I didn’t understand.”
“And where are you now?” he asked.
“In Cheltenham,” I said. “The gunman cut the power and the telephone wires. I’ve had to leave to make a call on my mobile. There’s no signal at the cottage.”
“Is anyone still at the cottage?”
“Only the dead man,” I said. “I have Claudia and my mother with me in the car.”
“So are you going back there now?” he asked.
“No,” I said firmly. “Whoever sent this man could send another.”
“So where are you going?” he asked, not questioning my decision.
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “I’ll call you when I do.”
“Who knew you were at your mother’s place?” he asked, always the detective.
“Everyone in my office,” I said. And whomever else Mrs. McDowd had told, I thought.
“Right,” he said. “I’ll call the Gloucestershire Police, but they’ll definitely want to talk to you, and to Claudia and your mother. They may even want you back at the cottage.”
“Tell them I’ll call them there in two hours,” I said.
“But you said the line had been cut.”
“Then get it fixed,” I said. “And get the power back on. Tell them I think my mother has left the stove on. I don’t want the place burning down when the power’s reconnected. And also tell them I’ve left the back door unlocked so they won’t have to break the front door down to get in.”
“OK,” he said. “I’ll tell them.” He paused. “Is the gun still under the fridge?”
“No,” I said. “I retrieved it.”
“So where is it now?”
I had so wanted to bring it with me, to give myself the armed protection that I’d been denied by the police.
“It’s outside the front door,” I said. “In a bush.”
“Right,” he said, sounding slightly relieved. “I’ll tell the Gloucestershire force that too. Save them hunting for it, and you.”
